With a March 16th date set for Crimea's referendum (to confirm that the region, which has an ethnic Russian majority, is a part of Russia) and a few short days after Ukraine's Prime Minister Yatsenyuk is due to meet President Obama in the White House, Reuters reports that The United States will not recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia if residents of the region vote to leave Ukraine. Obama has said a referendum on Crimea would violate international law and the Ukrainian constitution... but this raise 3 awkward (and apparently hypocritical) questions on the right to self-determination.

Reuters reports that the US will not recognize Crimea's annexation (or implicitly their right to self-determination),

Tony Blinken, U.S. President Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser, said on CNN's "State of the Union" program that Russia would come under increased international pressure as a result of the referendum in Crimea.

"First, if there is an annexation of Crimea, a referendum that moves Crimea from Ukraine to Russia, we won't recognize it, nor will most of the world," Blinken said.

"Second, the pressure that we've already exerted in coordination with our partners and allies will go up. The president made it very clear in announcing our sanctions, as did the Europeans the other day, that this is the first step and we've put in place a very flexible and very tough mechanism to increase the pressure, to increase the sanctions."

Obama has said a referendum on Crimea would violate international law and the Ukrainian constitution.

Let us accept (as I do) the principle that national minorities have the right to self-determination within lopsided multi-ethnic states; e.g. Croats and Kosovars seceding from Yugoslavia, Scots from the UK, Georgians from the Soviet Union etc.

Awkward question no. 1: On what principle can we deny, once Croatia, Kosovo, Scotland and Georgia have come into being, the right of Krajina Serbs, of Mitrovica Serbs, of Shetland Islanders and of Abkhazians to carve out, if they so wish, their own nation-states within the newly independent nation-states in the areas where they constitute a clear majority?

Awkward question no. 2: On what principle does a western liberal deny the right of Chechens to independence from Russia, but is prepared to defend to the hilt the Georgians’ or the Ukrainians’ right to self-determination?

Awkward question no. 3: On what principle is it justifiable that the West acquiesced to the raising to the ground of Grozny (Chechnya’s capital), not to mention the tens of thousands of civilian deaths, but responded fiercely, threatened with global sanctions, and raised the spectre of a major Cold War-like confrontation over the (so far) bloodless deployment of undercover Russian troops in Crimea?

The above three questions are being asked not because I want to challenge the notion that Mr Putin is a dangerous despot. I have no doubt that he is. Indeed, I wear as a badge of honour the fact that I was in a minority of one in the Faculty Board meeting of the University of Athens in 2003, where I voted against the award of an honourary doctoral degree to Mr Putin by the University of Athens (denying the University the opportunity to state that the award had been unanimous, and thus incurring the wrath of most colleagues who had been ‘requested’ politely by the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs to honour Mr Putin during his visit to Athens).

My three awkward questions have two aims: To remind readers of the West’s unprincipled attitude toward ‘other’ people’s struggles and tragedies. And to explain, in part, why such unprincipled behavior by the proponents of democratic principles ends up denigrating not only these very principles but greatly reinforcing the power and influence of the Putins of this world as well.

Europe and the Ukraine

Ukrainians fought pitched battles against the security forces in Kiev’s main square to protest against the former President Yanukovic’s decision to back out of a deal that would seal the country’s partnership with the European Union. Why? Are they blind to the incongruities of the European Union?

No, they are not. However, Ukrainians are facing a different type of problem compared to those we Europeans do. Whatever bone we have to pick with Brussels, with the ECB etc. (and we have many!), the people of Kiev had other priorities. E.g. how to rid themselves of security forces that felt at liberty to torture and to kill; how to travel freely; how to live in a country where courts were not completely run by the same mafia that run the state apparatus. To them, the fact that democracy is on the wane in the Eurozone and Europe’s principles are becoming increasingly hollow, matters little: The EU, however fast it may be descending into democratic illegitimacy, still looks like Heaven through many Ukrainian eyes.

Having said that, the greatest tragedy for Ukrainians is that their highest hopes are resting on weak shoulders: the European Union’s!

‘Europe’s Foreign Policy’ are three words that only need to be stated to cause hilarity. For there is no such thing, in truth. Even the Franco-German axis has been shuttered by Libya, let alone the ambitious idea of a common foreign policy for a United Europe that can act as a bulwark helpful to the Ukraine.

While Libya was of minimal importance to Europe’s security, even if of crucial importance to the Libyans, Ukraine is crucial and Europe ought to tread very carefully. What worries me the most is that the seriousness of the Ukrainian crisis is in inverse proportion to Europe’s competence in the field of foreign policy. Brussels may be keen to expand its ‘authority’ Eastward but it is treading into dangerous territory, ill equipped to deal with the repercussions.

The United States, the IMF, Germany and the Ukraine

The Ukraine is, and was always going to be, the battleground between Russia’s industrial neo-feudalism, the US State Department’s ambitions, and Germany’s neo-Lebensraum policies. Various ‘Eurasianists’ see the crisis in Kiev as a great opportunity to promote a program of full confrontation with Russia, one that is reminiscent of Z. Brzezinski’s 1970s anti-Soviet strategy. Importantly, they also see the Ukraine as an excellent excuse to torpedo America’s role in normalising relations with Iran and minimising the human cost in Syria. At the same time, the IMF cannot wait to enter Russia’s underbelly with a view to imposing another ‘stabilization-and-structural-adjustment program’ that will bring that whole part of the former Soviet Union under its purview. As for Germany, it has its own agenda which pulls its in two different directions at once: securing as much of the former Soviet Union as part of its neo-Lebensraum strategy of expanding its market/industrial space Eastwards; while, at the same time, preserving its privileged access to gas supplies from Gazprom.

As for the White House itself, there is little doubt that both President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry understand the limits of Western power and the danger that too much of a hawkish reaction to the events in the Ukraine will undermine their efforts vis-à-vis Syria and Iran, at a time when Iraq is being increasingly destabilised.

The bottom line, unfortunately, it would appear therefore that this referendum may well be the tipping point in this crisis. With a second city in Crimea revolting today, it would appear a foregone conclusion that the referendum will come down in favor of annexation which will pit Russia (forced to support its countrymen who it sees as having voted legally for self-determination) against US (cornered by comments on the legitimacy of the referendum and likely promises to Yatsnyuk) - we suspect March 16th will be the risk-off moment.

Question #4, if these new nation states are able to vote themselves out and self determine their goverment, what is stopping any US state from the same? I've come to the conclusion that the only way to stop the Federal government monster is for various states to start leaving the union and properly starve the beast.

I wonder if the a-hole that wrote this article, if the shoe were on the other foot, and knowing everything we know about the Dictator Obama, if Obama was to receive an honorary degree from the University of Athens, would his vote be the same as it was for Putin?

The United States will not recognize the annexation of Crimea by Russia if residents of the region vote to leave Ukraine.

Isn't there a fort in Sevastopol harbor that the Crimeans can shoot at or something? Then Lincoln Obama can invade and then send in the carpetbaggers. Oh wait, the looting of Ukraine has already begun.

Paul Craig Roberts is right on some things, but he goes too far, so far that he basically makes himself a loon and, like Bill Gertz or other paranoid commentors, cannot be taken seriously by sober people.

It's simple. The US should just not interfere in the political/military activites of any Country in the Eastern Hemisphere. IT'S NONE OF OUR BUSINESS and it's no risk to our safety. Let's cut the military budget in 1/2 and make their main mission protecting the US borders. Maybe then McCain and the other assholes will be less inclined to stick their noses and other people's bodies where they don't belong.

"Let's cut the military budget in 1/2 and make their main mission protecting the US borders."

But then how will "we" maintain the reserve currency status of jewbux of all varieties? That and petrojewbux need to be maintained at the point of guns abroad - little differently than it is maintained domestically when you consider it fundamentally.

US trade deficits also require that reserve currency status. At interest, the US's trade cumulative deficits since Nixon travelled to China amount to $17 trillion dollars. Now where have we heard that figure before? Worse than being a debt slave, the US citizen also ships his job abroad in sacrifice to the mammon of demon seed sociopaths.

The jews will just have to learn Mandarin and Russian. Jews made a mistake when they piled into israel. Once israel is smoked, judaism will not recover, there won't be critical mass anywhere. Like obama, they are between a rock and a hard place.

The only thing that any of TPTB care about in ANY revolutionary crisis is whether or not THEIR debt-based-currency scheme will be put in place (with ties to the IMF). Were ANY rogue nation to appear (ala the Third Reich) that would actually SHOW the world what is economically possible WITHOUT their diabolic usurious tentacles wrapped around them - the creatures would be doomed. They're doomed inevitably, but this would bring their demise about almost instantly.

The computers are 70% of trading. They do what they wish, and what they wish is to look at share buybacks funded by the Fed.

They don't care about much else. Mutual fund investment committees are not doing hourly reallocation of asset profile. They don't care about China export statistics. If China weakness reduced profit at US corporations, earnings per share can still rise by buying back even more shares.

Profit / revenue decline has to fall enormous amounts to make this happen, and the only real engine to make that happen is oil.

The new prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk has Jewish ancestry so his appointment of another Ukrainian with Jewish roots is no surprise. Both will happily do everything the USA wants. This is not a racist comment, just wanted to highlight their background and their allegiance. Another fact he is a failed minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk was once the head of the Ukrainian Finance Department or the bank and he failed miserable in looking after the finances when he was previously in charge about 6 years ago. The people now in power have no real idea what to do, all they knew was to overthrow the government and then let the West provide and allow them to dictate how Ukraine should be run. First will be a austerity move, new contracts signed to buy American weapons, allow them to build missile defense, contracts to American oil and gas companies. I hear Chevron and Exxon already have contracts. Monsanto will come in with GM seeds. Ukraine will get some money, but it will be phased in over the next 5 years when they really need $15 billion a year. So the people will be poorer than they are now. Ukraine won't feel any benefit for a long time from EU integration, a few will get rich while the rest will suffer. After a year of this, I'm guessing the people will be out in Maidan again to get rid of this one sided deal.

Well it is typical of them not allowing the people to decided. The people protested against the Iraq war and they still went and fought an illegal war.

Other 'referendums' have been held but when the outcome was not as was wanted TPTB, they held another referendum.

I have seen a clip for a vote by members of a party in the US, the chair kept asking the question, didn't like the answer, kept asking, in the end he said it was as he wanted and it was clear that this was not the will of the rest of the participants but he ignored them completely

This also gives us a glimpse into how TPTB would react if any prosperous states of the union would attempt to secede these days to free themselves from parasitic taxation schemes that will be placed on them to enable the federal govt to continue providing bread and circuses to the dependent masses in the less-prosperous welfare states.

The part that still troubles me is that Obama jumped so damn quickly to support the fascist leaders in the uprising (and issue an EO in record time) -- as though they were truly representative of even the Kiev population, much less the rest of the "country".

Clearly his Advisers and Handlers -- an almost homogenous group -- have different plans than are being promoted to the public.

But, if we and Obama are to keep the "internal consistency" of his argument of "self-determination", then other parts of Ukraine (or any other place on earth) also have that same right: Independence from the rest.

Thus his 'quandry' (that he does not acknowledge):

> Legitimate power change via elections, or Illegitimate power change via a Coup by a group that's well-supported (from outside)?

If we take Obama's "argument" to its logical extreme (Reducto ad absurdum), then... If a well-armed, well-organized and well-funded group of fascist Protesters (anti-black, anti-Jewish) took over the Capitol and stormed the WH, then this would be a "legitimate" Regime Change? But California or NY (and its Blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Indians and Chinese, etc) could not secede from the New Regime?

Or should we first ask GS? Or should we first ask the Rockefellers (Exxon-Mobil, Chevron) and Halliburton what non-valuable parts may secede?

Obama's "jumping so damn quickly" is specifically reminiscent of his calling the police "stupid" when the harvard professor was caught breaking into his own house. I've never seen a president so quick to insert himself into populist positions, evidence be damned. Trayvon is another case of inserting his presidential opinion into a crimnal case (just happening to agree with racist popular opinion) before the trial.

His judgement IS that bad. Look at his appointments. Sec'y Kerry inspire confidence?

speaking of things that are never recognized,
like reality, by the us government ...
power does not look to recognise anything,
it looks to create the world in its image
as distorted or vile as that may appear to the
average mortal.
.
"Just as “your” government and “your” prostitute media lie to you about Ukraine, Putin, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Iran, Pakistan, Yemen, Palestine, NSA, spying, torture, 9/11, Obamacare, and literally everything under the sun, “your” government lies to you about the economy and hides from you the perilous state of your economic existence. If you are not among the One Percent, you have no future in America." pcr
.http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/03/07/jobs-economy-prospects-peace-...

The director of the state-run natural gas enterprise Srbijagas added that the the project was not being held back by problems in funding and provision of guarantees for loans.

Speaking at a Russian-Serbian round table on energy in Belgrade on Thursday, Bajatovi? said that he expects appropriate solutions regarding a loan agreement for the project to be found next week, adding that the agreement will be signed soon.

This, he said, has also been confirmed by First Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vu?i?.

Bajatovi? said that the technical part of the tender for contractors in the construction of the section of South Stream through Serbia has been completed and the contractors will be chosen by the end of April.

This will create the conditions for the works to commence immediately after that, he added.

He pointed out that there have been neither significant delays nor holding back the South Stream project, but rather only a small deviation from the original plan of procedures, as it is vital to negotiate the financial part of the loan agreement carefully.

Bajatovi? said that the Serbian government has done everything to put this project to implementation. He pointed out that the loan, which Gazprom offered Srbijagas, amounts to about EUR 270 million, and is favorable given a fixed annual interest rate of 4.25 percent and a repayment period of 15 years.

Gazprom has not demanded a state guarantee for this loan, Bajatovi? said, adding that the original intention of Srbijagas to ask for a EUR 75 million loan as its incorporation stake in South Stream, which also required a state guarantee, has been dropped.

The Srbijagas director and representatives of the Serbian Energy Ministry said during the roundtable that despite the pressure, Serbia has a political will to see the project completed as that is in Serbia’s economic interest.

The fact that Serbia signed a strategic agreement in the energy sector with Russia, passed a special law on South Stream, which serves as a guarantee that the project is of national interest, and signed a transportation agreement guaranteeing that Gazprom will be entitled to a one hundred percent pipeline capacity lease, speaks enough about Serbia's intention to carry the project through to completion.

Blinken was born in Yonkers, New York, to Jewish parents Judith and Donald Blinken. He attended Dalton School in New York City until 1971, when he moved to Paris, France, with his divorced mother and her new husband, Hollowhoax survivor and lawyer, Samuel Pisar. Pisar, who had survived both the Auschwitz and Dachau, strongly influenced his views.

Holy shit his stepfather survived not one but TWO "deathcamps". Gasp. How many did Elie Weasel (sick) claim to have survived? 10? 20? Depends on what day you asked him.

"For 45 years, the standard histories told us four million people died at Auschwitz. When the communist iron curtain disintegrated in 1990, the figure was revised downwards to 1.5 million, but the real death total still remains a mystery. Some historians estimate less than 100,000 people died in that camp, primarily from disease and starvation caused by Allied bombing.

Death totals at other major German camps have likewise been significantly reduced by official sources. The Majdanek and Mauthausen camps were at one time claimed to be the resting places of 3.5 million Jews and others. Establishment sources now contend that around 74,000 Jews died in those two facilities combined."

"Curators of the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland have now conceded that the initial Allied claim of 1.5 million deaths in that German-run facility was a huge exaggeration. Now the Majdanek death toll officially stands at 60,000.[17] The German-run Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria was said by the 1963 Encyclopedia Britannica to be the resting place of “2,000,000 people, mostly Jews.”[18] Today the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website subtracted 1,986,000 from that number, and now says that 14,000 Jews died there.[19]"

6MM? Still?? Considering that one ZH poster claims that jews have an average of 15 points higher IQ, I guess that math isn't part of that determination.(although he/she/it did not say higher than what/who. typical jew mendacity)

Yes, they came to power in Kiev. But they came to power with the help of Molotov cocktails, violence, bloodshed, sniper rifles, mass murder and deceit.But is this important? The main thing is that the U.S. already recognize the power of their pocket fascists in Kiev.

Bold claim considering that 1) 95% of you reptilian khazar kikes have no more semitic DNA than my dog, and 2) the PALS have been there for thousands of years.

Earlier you claimed that jews have an average IQ 15 points higher. You neglected to say higher than what/whom.

Does your chosen IQ test have only one question: "How many Gentile babies need to be sacrificed to make 100 lbs of matzoh?" That's a trick question (like most things jewish today); the correct answer in kikedome is of course, "Irrelevant. There can never be enough Gentile blood spilled."

regardless, i.e. even if true by the numbers, Jews have a disproportionate share of, e.g. Ivy League admissions. Non Jewish whites are under-represented. There are far more Gentile geniuses than Jewish geniuses, of course. See Kevin MacDonald on this. The ethnic group with the largest number of geniuses is of course the Han Chinese.

Jewish supremacism is, of course, baked in to Judaism from the outset, and it is always refreshing, seriously, to see a Jewish racialist simply be openly racialist.

When your ancestors puked out their native culture for a dumbed down prole paganized version of a Jewish daughter religion that deified a dead Jew on a stick , was it because in their limited wisdom they realized their native traditions were shit and anything was better
Or were they too stupid to realize that they were accepting a dumbed down prole paganized version of another peoples culture?

And while I'm not Christian myself, the fact you think Christianity is "Jewish" rather than a Romanized near eastern sun-god cult tells me you don't know very much about it. You might find this site interesting:

Admittedly you can expect almost anything from drunken proles, but considering Jews are explicitly prohibited in eating blood , a more plausible slander should have been created.
Maybe you pagans should have read the book.

For Quebec we agreed on 50% plus one. The tricky part would have been dividing the assets and the liabilities. And then the question was what about further divisions. Do the Cree have the right to separate from Quebec andd so forth. I know Westmount, an English part of Montreal, would not want to leave Canada.

Fragile? Only because it's stacked so damn high. Give it time, though, they're debasing the currencies as fast as they can. We'll pay it all back with one check later. Or a few trillion dollar coins! Bwaahaahaahaa!

O. - "Look, we have not respected the election process in Syria, Ukraine, Iraq, Iran and Egypt. Imagine the harm to the economy and world order if we allowed people to actually have a say. Not to mention, supporting every small country that wants to be a democracy in an area that is against our actual interests. The cost of supplying and fighting on both side would be astronomical. The audaciousness of self determination outside of the approved world structure would only lead to chaos."

What's awkward? The borders devised by imperialist and communist powers are sacred and inviolable if that's what the west wants. Besides they've worked so fabulously. A plethora of multicultural utopias. Any amount of blood and treasure is worth it to keep people glued together.

Unless of course the west's interests or even whims are otherwise. Then it's all self determination and human rights.

There are quite a few areas where there would be cause for concern by TPTB.

Scotland is being pressured to separate from the UK. This will cause no end of problems for Scotland, but the UK will benefit because they won't need the limp wristed liberal perverts to form a government.

Catalonia wants to separate from Spain which will cause severe problems for Spain and the EU, which can only be a good thing.

Anything that gives TPTB a headache has to be seen as beneficial for the population in general.

The EU is still in existence ONLY because of the BIS, IMF, US and the fact that the general population have been well and truly stiffed for the next 4 or 5 generations.

North sea oil is mostly irrelevant to Scotland's prosperity overall. Scotland is balance of trade positive without it, it exports a lot of goods and services (£70 billion not including oil on a £250 billion GDP), mostly to the rest of the UK, but also to America, Europe and the rest of the world. Including oil and gas in the calculations and Scotland becomes heavily balance of trade positive, particularly with England, where most of it goes.

So, yes oil would help but it is by no means required for Scotland to successfully stand alone.

Now... The effect of Scotland's independence on England is another matter entirely. England's balance of trade would go drastically more deeply into the red if oil and gas were included. The UK as a whole is running a trade deficit and most of that is England's (95% of the UK population is in England). If Scotland also became an external supplier, England would very quickly turn into a basket case, and this looks to me like the real reason for the level of resistance we are seeing from Westminster.

I appreciate the author's acknowledgement of German designs on Ukraine. These have been proven historically by various invasions in 1918 and again in 1941. One thing the author failed to mention, or even acknowledge existed, was the fact that the desire of some in the west for a full on confrontation with Russia takes us decades into the very dangerous past in which the USA and USSR stood armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons on hair trigger. Younger folks have no idea how HAIR that TRIGGER was. So now the neoloberals bankers and the necon empire builders want to go for broke against a much, much smaller nation, Russia, but one equipped with a fully functional nuclear triade system. Do they realize that by pushing for empire against Russia they threaten to set off the end of us all in a nuclear exchange? Is it worth it? What say do we ordinary people have against the new banker centered ruling class of total madmen?

Is it western "liberals" that are champions of consistency, individual rights, and legally/Constitutionally limited government, because I hadn't noticed.

We are well past the point where pointing out hypocrisy matters. Much of what the US has proclaimed in the past 30 or 40 years stands in stark contrast to its deeds. The hypocrist, deception and lies baked in to the Zionist theft of Palestine perhaps set the stage for the modern era's Orwellian DiploSpeak.... we want to achieve peace with the other side by continuing to colonize, murder, and denigrate them. And this is basically accepted.

There is still some need to lie, of course, but the lies are less and less artful.

I take it that Obama, like Bush before him, is largely a puppet. "Yats" is going to meet with him in a few days, but they are probably both being given their marching orders.

RT's "The Truthseeker" just engaged in a 15 minute tirade on the US State Department and CIA control of western NGO's, Human Right's Organizations and even the fucking Red Cross. He did in 15 minutes expose these NGO's as fronts for the neocon movement in a powerful way, with plenty of third party evidence. Amazing stuff. The Banker Centered New World Order is very smart, they have done their homework and have got average Americans in their spell of lies.

{{Ole Larry, despite what I'd deem a complete lack of relevant background or expertise, was a "senior advisor to the CPA in Iraq, a complete clusterfuck organization of incompetence and theft - I mean, basically a mafia. You simply have to, as an observer, wonder as to how much of this is "globalism" and how much is "international private banking" and how much is to do with transnational, organized zionism/jewry. Again, Russia and Ukraine are less than 2% Jewish each. The head of the CPA was Jewish - you would have thought they could find a Muslim or at least a non-Jew to run the occupation government of an Arab country, but of course, the idea was never to help rebuild Iraq into a country that could be an economic let alone military threat to the only democracy in the middle east}}

Of course, it is by no means the only issue or topic, and one is free to simply not ask the question, or notice the Nulands and Pyatts and Feltman's and "Yats"es and Diamonds, and who the oligarchs are, but I can't see any but sham-ethical reasons for not noticing the wild over-representation of a group that is not ethnic Ukrainian or Russian having so much to do with the current crisis, and, the point here is, certainly the nationalists, even moderates, will notice it.

How much more will they notice when Yats and the oligarchs impose austerity and start the firesale to, I'm willing to bet, disproportionately western corporations, and disproportionately Jewish owned ones?

Meanwhile, we can also count on the continued over the top Russia bashing, and the complete whitewashing of the State Department's meddling in the internal affairs of another country, and immediate support of a mob that overthrew a government that had scheduled elections.

And we can count on many or most of these hit pieces being penned by Jews. I wonder if no one will notice this because it is politically verboden to do so... a very well organized response will come to any author who suggests that Jews seem to be well organized... intra and transnationally. http://eajc.org/page32/news43672.html

Tony, Have you seen the videos of obviously blackwater mercenaries strolling the streets of Donetsk? They were prowling around a pro Russia demonstration armed to the teeth. People starting shouting "blackwater" and the fucking thugs ran off. Also Kiev, taken in armed riots, has announced a ban on pro Russia rallies and called for repression of them. Russia intelligence say 300+ blackwater have long been in country. These fucking cunts should be hunted down and eliminated. Kiev has a western mercenary force, paid for by Me and You I am sure. Our taxes at work.

After Yanukovych and the political opposition agreed to an orderly transition toward new elections, the opposition shattered the agreement quickly and took strategic positions around Kiev. Many voices in the Western press say the country could break apart.

It's worth noting that Yanuk had agreed to early elections and various reforms. But DC and the IMF couldn't risk free and fair elections. So you had a mob take over government, to the immediate recognition of the west, with no vote, and lots of loans to be agreed to by the "interim" and "acting" ministers.

While all the focus is on Eastern Ukraine, there may well be considerable trouble in the West. You had a Jewish American state department official declaring in a taped phone call who the next PM should be, to the Jewish ambassador. And in a country where Jews are 0.7% of the population, their man also happened to be of Jewish background, just like many {most?} of the dozen or so Ukrainian oligarchs, 1 or 2 of whom were recently appointed governors in the East.

The point is, this quite certainly will look to the more nationalistic Ukrainian elements like a "Jewish scheme" to get control of Ukraine's resources - and they won't entirely be wrong, just overly simplistic, and of course the truth of the matter being no defense - they will all be derided as neo-nazis and so forth.

Kiev is worried about the East right now, but I'd be a little surprised if their big problems aren't really in the West. Whatver name you call them, ethnic Ukrainian nationalists must find it pretty odd that they were the ones on the streets, and yet have largely been excluded from the "interim" government.